Storage modules may be used in different conditions, which place different performance requirements on the memory in the storage module. To account for these different conditions, memories in some storage devices can be operated in a “normal” mode or in a “burst” mode, in which a higher-than-average performance by the storage module is required to satisfy a higher-than-average number of write commands from a host controller. For example, when a storage module is part of a video camera device, raw video shot by the camera is stored in the camera's RAM, and then it is compressed and transferred to the memory in the storage module. In such systems, the memory is usually required to match the average rate of compressed video, and, as such, the burst mode may be needed to provide a write performance that matches the rate at which the video data is produced. For example, in some storage modules, the burst mode may be capable of supporting a storage rate of 160 MB/s for 4 GB, while the normal mode may support rates of up to 80 MB/s for 12 GB.
To achieve the higher-than-average performance, the storage module can store data in a single-level cell (SLC) partition instead of a multi-level cell (MLC) partition, as writing to SLC cells is faster than writing to MLC cells. Alternatively, instead of writing to a dedicated SLC partition, if the memory supports a dynamic configuration where a memory cell can be used either as an SLC cell or an MLC cell on demand, certain memory cells can be configured to be SLC cells during a burst mode. SLC mode is faster than MLC mode but consumes memory resources (i.e., the memory cells) at a rate that is at least twice the rate of MLC storage. Therefore, the capacity of a memory working in burst mode is smaller than the capacity of the memory working in non-burst mode, where MLC cells would be used. Moreover, in order to maximize the storage rate of a burst, the memory management software/firmware can be configured to avoid garbage collection operations during burst mode, as the number of memory cells available to store data is temporarily reduced during the garbage collection process. However, while maximizing instantaneous performance, avoiding garbage collection also reduces capacity, since at some point, the memory may exhaust all the existing free blocks and may have no additional available space for storing additional information.